


I Swear It By The Styx

by CharlotteDaBookworm



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Nyx Ulric, BAMF Selena Ulric, Because Styx would murder the world to save her family, Espionage, Family Bonding, Fluff and Angst, Galahdian Culture, Galahdian Resistance, Gen, Morally Ambiguous Character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Relationships, Protective Siblings, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Styx has no self-preservation and everyone blames Nyx for this, This is not what Styx agreed to, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2019-08-25 10:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16659598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteDaBookworm/pseuds/CharlotteDaBookworm
Summary: When an elf-man dressed in wizard's robes comes to you shortly after your death and asks for your help in saving his people, you should probably read the terms and conditions.Styx Ulric is definitely regretting agreeing to this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own FFXV

"Styx?"

 

She blinked up at the dark blur with a familiar voice. "...Nyx?" The blur looked like it had nodded. "Where are my glasses?"

 

"Here." He held something out and she sat up and reached out blindly, sighing in both relief and irritation as she grabbed them by the lenses. Still, she shoved them on her face, determinedly ignoring the fingerprints that blurred her vision as her brother's features came into focus, a worried frown on his face. There was a strange disconnect in her mind as she stared at her brother, almost as though she had expected to see someone else attached to the name. "Do you remember what happened?"

 

What _had_ happened?

 

"I... I tripped?" She said slowly, trying to piece together what she remembered. "Over a tree root, 'cos I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking?" As she said it, the memories rushed back, slotting into place. "Ow. My _head_."

 

Nyx laughed, the sound relieved. "Yeah, you hit your head on the way down. You've got a nasty bump and Libs ran to get mum when we couldn't wake you up."

 

"What! Nyx, I'm fine!"

 

Her older brother _(and why did that thought feel so weird?)_ raised an eyebrow at her, completely unimpressed, and she wanted to pout because _really,_ the reckless one of them shouldn't be able to do disapproving so well. "I think the word that you're looking for is _clumsy_ , river light. How you can be so graceful one minute and so clumsy the next I'll never know." Styx scowled and opened her mouth to argue before she shut it again with a grimace. He had a point, she'd broken more than one bone tripping over things before. "Let mum check you out anyway, okay Styx?"

 

_"Fine."_

 

Nyx just laughed at her pout and she leaned back against the same tree that had tripped her up.

 

She must have dozed off at some point, because the next thing she remembered was opening her eyes to her mother's face and that odd disconnect was back, but it was worse this time, as she stared at the familiar face that almost seemed as though it should belong to a complete stranger.

 

And then, between one blink and the next, it was gone - leaving Styx reeling at the sudden change.

 

"Mum? _Ow!_ "

 

Alya Ulric just stared at her with steady blue eyes as Styx's hand flew up to her head, startled by the sharp pain when her mum had prodded the lump. Another few seconds passed, the two of them staring at each other, before she sat back on her heels. "You'll be fine. No training tomorrow though."

 

"What! Mum! I'm fine!" She protested immediately, shooting upwards, and another voice cried out at the same time.

 

"Come on, mum! Styx promised to show me how to throw knives tomorrow!" Selena whined, bouncing up to peer at her over their mother's shoulder.

 

Mum scowled, turning to glare at her youngest daughter.

 

 _Oh_ , she thought, staring at the pout on her little sister’s face while her older brother laughed himself sick off to the side, _I'm the middle sibling_.

 

 ** _Fuck_**.

 

And, with that almost innocuous thought, it was as though something that was knocked free by her fall had finally settled into place. "I'll teach you next week," she promised Lena absently, where just two minutes ago she had planned on arguing with her mother's decision, mind instead on the _decades_ of new memories that had just slotted into her head.

 

Memories of another life. Memories that showed the world that she lived in as a fictional place, as something from a _game_. That told exactly how her mother and brother and sister were going to die, all of them far too soon.

 

 _Double fuck_.

 

 

 

* * *

 

She woke up late the next morning and would have almost preferred not to have slept at all.

 

The night had been haunted by images of her brother shattering into ashes, of her sister's screams and her mother falling to some unknown soldier, and the lack of clear images was almost _worse_. She knew how Nyx had died, in that game from that other world, and she could picture her _brother_ shattering into ashes, betrayed by those he'd trusted, in horrifying HD. but even that was almost better than the murky half-formed snippets of how the rest of her family died.

 

Not knowing was _terrifying_ in a way that it had never been, before.

 

She woke up and her heart was beating out of her chest, tears burned at her eyes and panic rose in her throat as she desperately ripped the covers - tangled around her body from a night of tossing and turning, feeling more like a steel vice that pinned her down than cotton and cloth - off of her and tumbled out of the bed.

 

 _Fuck_. Ow.

 

Her head thumped against the floor - pounding, because _of course_ she'd managed to hit the bruised lump instead of literally any other part of her head - and her arms thrown out to try to break the fall _(and she needed to stop doing that, it led to broken arms)_ and her legs still tangled in the blankets, and she was suddenly so grateful that the house was empty at this time of day.

 

She just couldn't deal with her family's worry right now.

 

It took more effort than Styx wanted to admit to even contemplate picking herself up from where she lay sprawled on the floor, the chilled wood against her forehead both grounding and a welcome comfort, but she dragged herself into the bathroom anyway.

 

The tiles were freezing beneath her feet and, any other time, she probably would have cursed and leapt her way across the room on her tiptoes.

 

Instead, she walked into the shower stall, still in her pyjamas, and turned the water up as hot as she could stand even as she slid down the wall.

 

And there, curled into a ball in the bottom of the shower with her arms wrapped around her knees, while near-intolerably hot water pounded down around her and steamed up the room, Styx cried.

 

Great, _heaving_ sobs that shook her whole body and left her gasping for breath between each one.

 

She cried, and she couldn't breathe, and it _hurt_.

 

 _I don't want to die. I don't want to die again,_ please _, I don't want to_ die _. But I don't want my family to die either. I want to live, and I want them to live and I... I want to go home._

_I just want to go **home**. _

 

* * *

 

 

The water had run cold by the time she managed to piece herself back together and stop crying for more than a minute.

 

Styx stumbled upwards and shut the shower off, leaving her clothes in a sodden heap at the bottom of the wash basket and wrapping herself in a towel, and then she collapsed face down on her bed, more exhausted than she had been when she'd woken up due to the panic attack that - in her opinion - she had been more than due.

 

She couldn't go home, she knew that. Her home was gone. Her family was gone. She'd **died** _(and she didn't know how to deal with that, didn't know how to deal with the memories of sharp pain and so much blood and everything going dark)_ and left them and who knows how much time had passed since then. She couldn't go home again, and that thought made her want to cry again.

 

Fuck, but this _was_ her home, and this was her family.

 

And she just. She didn't want to think about that. Not right now.

 

_(Tomorrow._

_Tomorrow she'd deal with all of this: with the loss of her home, with the realisation that she couldn't go back, with the knowledge that this was her world now. Tomorrow she'd deal with reconciling the ten years of memories in this life with the twenty of another. Tomorrow, she'd pick herself up and move on._

_But not today. Today, she'd let herself grieve for what she'd lost)_

 

Sometime later, her phone buzzed violently on the bedside table and she groaned into the quilt. Blindly reaching out, she managed to grab it, _without_ knocking everything else off of the surface for once, and shoved it against her ear after hitting accept.

 

"...yeah?"

 

 _"Styx?"_ The sound was quiet, and she realised that she was holding the phone upside down.

 

"Hey-o, Daddy-o." She said in a monotone, her voice muffled against the bed from where she hadn't bothered to lift her head. Normally she loved phone calls from her father, especially since she couldn't visit the man often, but at the moment she couldn't drum up much enthusiasm for anything at all.

 

_"Your mother told me that you were injured."_

 

Styx sighed, finally rolling over and staring up at the ceiling. "I'm fine, dad. I just tripped over a tree and hit my head on the way down."

 

There was a pause, which was a little odd since her father knew how clumsy she could be at times. _"Are you certain? You don't sound like yourself."_

 

Who _was_ herself? Was she Styx Ulric? Or was she that other girl, who died in an alley on her way home?

 

Was she real? Or was she just fantasy?

 

Styx snorted at herself. _Unintentional Queen references, breaking people out of depressive episodes since whatever fucking year it is_. "Yeah." She said, pushing as much belief into the word as she could. "Yeah, dad, I'm fine. Just tired."

 

 _Fake it ‘til you make it_ was an accepted coping strategy, right?

 

Right.

 

Her father sighed, the sound carrying clearly across the line, and she could almost imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose. _"If you're certain-"_

 

"-I am dad-."

 

_"-Then I will allow you to sleep and call you again tomorrow."_

 

"Okay." She swallowed, hesitating for a second before forging on. "Love you."

 

 _"And I you._ Sleep _, Styx."_ And then the dial tone rang before she could reply.

 

Styx rolled her eyes so hard it nearly gave her a headache. _You can't Jedi mind trick me, dad_. Sleep... Sleep sounded nice though. She yawned.

 

Maybe the world would look better in the morning. If she didn't have another nightmare.

 

 _One can only hope_ , was her last thought as she slipped back into sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time that she woke next, it was dark outside, and the moon was high in the sky.

 

 _Well, that's my sleep schedule completely fucked_. Styx thought, staring out of freshly opened curtains and morbidly amused in the way of someone who had once had an insomniac for a flatmate.

 

But she hadn't been wrong. The world did look better after some more sleep - or, at least, everything seemed more manageable and less overwhelming.

 

"Or," she muttered to herself, ignoring the craziness of all of this. "That might have something to do with the fact that you actually put your glasses on this time." As she spoke, she reached up to touch the arm of the familiar frames - glad to have the comfort of something that was familiar from both of her lives.

 

Being practically blind without corrective lenses once again was worth that link to her past, no matter how irritating it could be at times.

 

Still, the lack of a pounding headache and limbs that no longer felt like jelly probably helped to account for her more enthusiastic outlook on life. Frankly, she felt miles better than she had before and that made her roll her eyes.

 

_Three cheers for the age-old trick of turning it off and then back on again. It even works on people!_

With another glance out of the window, she made up her mind.

 

Five minutes later, she ghosted through the house - doing her best not to wake her family on her way out - and then shut the door near silently behind her.

 

"That was far easier than I remember it being. Maybe it's the lack of dogs." She said under her breath as she headed directly to the tree line and passed through without hesitation. Having five dogs in the house hadn't exactly been conducive to doing _anything_ quietly, not when they'd woken up at the slightest creak of the stairs.

 

 _Pretty sure I used to have nightmares that started exactly like this_ , she laughed quietly at the thought - glancing upwards to where the light of the full moon streamed through the foliage eerily - the sound echoing in the silent jungle. One too many horror movies as a kid, she supposed, but this seemed like a plot from a Criminal Minds episode where she was the idiot about to end up murdered by a serial killer. _Still, I might as well embrace the aesthetic._

 

Styx grinned.

 

" _No light, no light, in your bright blue eyes,"_ she sang under her breath as she picked her way through the trees to the clearing that they used for training _. "I never knew daylight could be so violent. A revelation in the light of day, you can't choose what stays and fades away..."_ The song trailed off as she stepped into the clearing, moonlight illuminating it nearly as fully as it was by day.

 

"Alright, Old Man," Styx began, her voice rippling around the space, chin raised, and eyes narrowed. "I think we need to have a **_talk."_**

 

A flash of light and then the familiar, human-sized figure of the Fulgurian stood in front of her in the centre of the clearing.

 

"Twice-born." He said in greeting and Styx raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.

 

"Ramuh."

 

They stared at each other.

 

After a moment, she sighed. "Can I save them?" She asked, because she was a selfish person at heart and she didn't want to watch those she loved die. And she did love them. In the end, that was what mattered to her - not the world, not some kings that she had never met, but her family.

 

The Astral hummed in response. "You make your own fate, Styx Helios, child of Ulric." She couldn't say that she appreciated the reminder of who she was now, the subtle claim in his tone, but the unspoken reassurance in the sentence was comforting enough.

 

 _Nothing was set in stone_. Alright, she could work with that. Now she just had to find a way to keep them all alive through the end of the fucking world.

 

Great.

 

"I reserve the right to scream at you later for all of this." She said instead.

 

Ramuh shrugged and smirked, disappearing in another flash of light, and Styx scowled at the words that echoed in her mind. _You agreed to this, child._

 

"It's not like I knew what I was getting myself into, damn it, you smug bastard!" She screamed up at the sky, the volume sending birds flying.

 

She stomped her way back to the house, grumbling all the way about "bloody gods who didn't explain what they wanted you to do properly before you agreed to it."

 

 

* * *

 

 

"So, you're trying to find someone to help you save your people," The girl with no real name asked, leaning back against the nothingness - and she was doing best not to think about how that even _worked_.

 

The old man with a wizard-vibe floating in front of her nodded, before he made a gesture with his - quite frankly, pretty cool - staff that she, strangely enough, understood.

 

"And you want that person to be _me?_ " Because this was where this got weird - well, weirder than it already was with the whole being dead, floating in nothingness and randomly appearing elf-man-wizards.

 

Another gesture, this time one that she thought meant _yes_.

 

"Are you sure?" She questioned, surprised. "I mean, I'm not a fighter or anything, really. I am - _was_ \- just a student, and not even one in a subject that would really _help_. I don't really see what exactly I could do to help your people."

 

He smiled and reached out, lightning fast, to tap his staff against her heart. _You can love them_.

 

She blinked.

 

"The power of love? Seriously? What is this, _Harry Potter_?" She grumbled incredulously, pushing the staff away from her bloodstained clothes, but, in that split second, she made her decision.

 

What did she really have to lose?

 

With one last glance back to the life that she was leaving behind, to the family that mourned her and the world that she knew, she turned away and stepped closer to the old man. There was no use dwelling on what she'd already lost in that alleyway, she could freak out about all of this later.

 

"Oh, fuck it." She sighed. "Why not? I've always gotten stupidly attached to things anyway. And it's not like I have anything better to do. I'll help you."

 

The being seemed to sigh in relief, and the girl smiled.

 

"Now, let's talk about the important details. Tell me that wherever you're sending me has cats..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the first chapter of I Swear It By The Styx, I blame SparkleMoose and his SI/OC inserts for this entirely. Tell me what you think :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Really?” She said, groaning, slumping against the ground from her position half-buried in foliage. Her knee and shoulder ached a bit from where she’d bashed them trying to save herself. “ _Again?_ ” she muttered, raising her eyes to the sky because this was the second tree in two days and that was excessive even for her.

Making her way home was both easier and harder than the trip to the clearing itself had been.

 

Her irritation had faded quickly, as it had always done, and she ghosted through the trees almost unconsciously; her steps silent, even in the darkness of the early morning, and sure, even without looking. She’d grown up in this jungle, walking these trees, treading these paths, and she knew the path between the clearing and her house well enough that she didn’t even need to _think_ about it – and, perhaps, that was for the best, even though those memories had finally settled into place like a well-worn jacket.

 

Styx felt more like herself, more grounded, than she had since she had gone arse-over-tit over a tree root and smashed headfirst into a tree, knocking loose another lifetime’s worth of _life._

 

She felt whole, the world around her finally real, and she could breathe easier.

 

But there was also a weight on her shoulders, now. A weight that she didn’t quite know how to deal with.

 

Saving people, well, it hadn’t sounded _easy_ – she’d been the eldest child of two nurses, once, and she knew that helping people wasn’t easy – but she’d figured, all those years ago, that what did she have to lose? Clutching desperately at something – _anything_ – to distract her from the fact that she was dead, she’d decided that it was worth a try. Why not?

 

Back then, the people that she had been asked to save had just been strangers. Back then, she would have done her best because that was what she agreed to, but she wouldn’t have been _heartbroken_ if she failed. Back then, she wouldn’t have wanted them to die, but she couldn’t say that she would have truly cared.

 

She cared now.

 

Because these weren’t strangers, not anymore. They weren’t faceless beings from a foreign world, distant from Styx herself. No, this was her _family_. This was her mum, who told her bedtime stories about past hunts and shuffled her out of bed for katas. This was her sister, who followed her around like a lost puppy and was absolutely hopeless when any close combat weapon that didn’t weigh more than her. This was her brother, who always had a smile and a plan and a hidden stash of chocolate that he’d share.

 

They weren’t strangers. They were her family and Galahd wasn’t some country she’d never heard of, it was her home and she felt safe here. She was happy here.

 

This was her family and she loved them.

 

~~She’d always gotten attached far too quickly~~

 

She couldn’t just let them _die_.

 

But they would, if she couldn’t save them. Because that was the whole reason that the Old Man had brought her here; Styx knew how this story ended and, unless she could somehow change it, they’d all be dead within twenty years. Their lives were on her shoulders and, for a moment, the weight of that responsibility was so heavy that she couldn’t _breathe_ -

 

-And then, she tripped.

 

Right over yet another tree root, sending her tumbling into a bush even as she tried to catch herself.

 

“Really?” She said, groaning, slumping against the ground from her position half-buried in foliage. Her knee and shoulder ached a bit from where she’d bashed them trying to save herself. “ _Again_?” she muttered, raising her eyes to the sky because this was the second tree in _two days_ and that was excessive even for her.

 

Thunder rumbled in the distance, lightning flashing briefly against the horizon, and she scowled. The old bastard was laughing at her!

 

“Fuck you too, Old Man.”

 

She sighed, beginning the process of carefully extracting herself from the bush, managing it quickly and relatively painlessly with the ease of long practice. This wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last.

 

 _New life, still clumsy. Reincarnation is a fucking_ hack _._

 

Using her left wrist to lever herself up to her feet and then stretching it out instinctively, she frowned. Huh. No pain. No stiffness. No bone-deep ache _. Huh._ “Weird,” Styx poked at her wrist, wondering at the absence of pain, before she realised that she’d not even broken it once, this life. Let alone the multitude of breaks of her last life. She poked it again, eyebrows raised. “Cool, but _weird_.”

 

 _Okay, not a total hack then_.

 

She spent another moment poking at her wrist, unable to quite believe it.

 

Then she laughed at herself, because seriously. This entire _situation_ was weird, but it was her wrist that was throwing her off? She’d died at twenty, been approached by a wizard-elf-man _(and no, she wasn’t going to stop calling him that)_ asking for her help, and then she’d been reincarnated into a fictional world _(which would teach her to read the bloody fine print)_ , and yet somehow it was the perfectly healthy wrist that was too much for her to deal with?

 

“Gods, my priorities are fucked up.”

 

Styx stood there, giggling quietly, for a long moment – covered in dirt and leaves with her glasses slightly askew, a twig caught in her hair, as she leaned against the tree laughing – before a sudden wind made her realise that, actually, she was freezing.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

Shivering, she shoved her hands deep into her pockets and hunched her shoulders against the chill, wishing that she’d thought to bring a jacket before going to yell at elf-wizard-men in the middle of the night. But apparently determination did wonders for keeping people warm and so did irritation. Unfortunately, Styx found either difficult to drag up now. Pity.

 

Still, glancing around told her that she was thankfully only minutes from home, so she trudged onwards until she reached the edge of the treeline – where she froze.

 

“Fuck.”

 

Tree bark scraped at her back as she slid down a nearby trunk, her t-shirt riding up a little, until she sat sprawled on the ground at the base of the tree; staring at her home.

 

Her chest ached.

 

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go in, but…

 

But there was this knowledge – deep in her bones, caught in the back of her throat, burning at her eyes – that the moment she stepped through that doorway there would be no going back. Going home would be like closing a chapter on her past, would mean accepting that this was her life now, and this would all become horribly _real._

Reality was terrifying.

 

And the memories had settled, they felt _right_ , and she loved her family, she did, but she- she didn’t know if she wanted this to be real.

 

If this was real then it meant accepting that she would never see her home – not the home in front of her that most of her said was right but the older part of her said was wrong, the home with five dogs and her mum and her dad and both of her younger brothers, the one that she’d grown up in and the one her nan lived at and the one that she only saw a couple months of the year, the too small one with not enough rooms that was always far too loud but felt safe – again, and it meant accepting that that home was _gone_.

 

That they were all gone.

 

The part of her – still distinct but merging – that was twenty and dead and grieving everything that she’d ever known, clung to that home and wanted nothing more than to refuse to accept it.

 

But then, what good had denying the truth ever done.

 

This was her home.

 

And that other place, it was gone.

 

It was gone, and her chest ached, and her eyes burned.

 

 _“Fuck_.” Taking a shuddering breath, she clenched her fists – using the sharp pain of nails digging into skin to drown out the burning of her eyes and only loosening them when she no longer felt the need to cry. They left half-crescent indents in her palms, she noted absently.

 

She couldn’t go in there. Not yet. She would, soon enough, but it could wait a little longer. Right now, she just _couldn’t_.

 

Instead, she shoved herself up, staggering over to the grass beside the house – where she’d spent so many hours messing around with Selena and Nyx, where her mum had guided her through her first clumsy katas – and collapsing backwards onto it, facing away from the house. Her hands went under her head and she planned to take a nap, let her emotions settle a bit more, and then go about her day. There were a couple of hours to kill until sunrise and she could use the sleep.

 

But then she looked upwards and-

 

The sight of the night sky took her breath away.

 

It shouldn’t have, not really. It was just the _sky_ , nothing that she hadn’t seen a thousand times before, but now that she had the memories of growing up in a world where most of the stars were completely hidden by light pollution – where you had to go pretty deep into the countryside to catch sight of even a fraction of what she could now see – and now that she was actually focusing on it instead of just accepting it...

 

…there were so many _stars_.

 

It was probably a good thing, by this point, she was already so past panic that she’d entered the stage of zen that she typically only achieved just prior to major exams; that meant that she was able to take in the moment with awe that was untainted by the fear and grief caused by how different it was.

 

 _They’re beautiful_ , she thought as she gazed up at the endless expanse and scanned for the constellations that she’d learn at her mother’s knee.

 

That was one of her earliest memories, in this life – bundling up in a blanket and clinging to her mother’s leg as the woman pointed out star after star, knowing the names of them all and whispering the stories behind them. Every so often, Nyx had jumped in excitedly and Selena would fuss in their mum’s arms and Styx had just stared up in the sky in awe.

 

She’d spent weeks, months, learning the names of all the stars; learning to use them to navigate, which had somehow lead into lessons on how to properly climb and fall from trees, and she thought that she could still name most of them now – even though she hadn’t thought of those lessons in years.

 

But, somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten the sheer _awe_ of the night sky, and the grin that tipped her lips was unexpected but not unwelcome.

 

 _This is your home_ , those twinkling lights seemed to whisper and yeah, she thought she might be okay with that.

 

Some indeterminate time later, a fleece was draped over her legs and a warm body settled down beside her. Styx didn’t react, having heard him coming – her brother was anything but quiet outside of a hunt –, and she shuffled closer to his warmth, sighing. She’d forgotten just how cold she was.

 

Pressed against him, she could hear the steady beat of his heart, could feel the breaths that he took, and the images that clung to her mind like a shadow – images of a man who shattered into ashes as the sun rose, alone and betrayed and completely unconcerned – finally settled.

 

She relaxed.

 

Together, they lay there in silence for a long period, both staring up at the sky and lost in their own thoughts, before she moved her head to squint at him.

 

“I sense the Old Man,” Nyx said in response to the question that she didn’t ask. There was a silent query there, one she didn’t know how to answer.

 

Styx sighed again, irritation sparking once again at the reminder of her chat with the elf-wizard-man, and burrowed further into his side and the warmth that he offered. “No offence, but your patron is the bit of a dick,” she grumbled, not willing to lie to her brother but not wanting to get into it. Nyx shook with silent laughter.

 

“I know.” He said when he’d calmed down a little, slightly out of breath from the effort of holding his laughter in so he didn’t wake their mother up. “Trust me, I know.”

 

He didn’t ask, even though she knew he desperately wanted to, and she loved him for it.

 

Instead, they watched the stars and talked about nonsensical things until the sky began to lighten in preparation of the coming dawn and the morning chill became too much to bear.

 

And then they stumbled instead, fleeces wrapped around shoulders and laughing quietly, trying not to wake anyone up, only to be bundled into the kitchen by their scowling mother. Styx sat at the table, numb hands wrapped awkwardly around a mug of hot chocolate, and shared a secret grin with Nyx as their mum scolded them both for spending so long outside, in the dark, in nothing but t-shirts.

 

 _Yeah_ , Styx thought, raising her mug to her lips to hide her smile as Nyx mock breathed a sigh of relief as their mum turned to her, _alright, old man. you win. this is my home_.

 

 _And I’m gonna save them_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally the first scene for the second chapter but, upon rewriting it recently, I realised that not only is it long enough to be a chapter in its own right, but it also has a different tone to what would be the rest of the next chapter - which is mostly family fluff and bonding, no angst
> 
> so i figured that i may as well post this as its own chapter, it's long enough and it works well enough as a transitional one. no promises on when the next chapter will be
> 
> hope you like it, tell me what you think


End file.
